Sesame Street writer says he modeled Bert and Ernie on his homosexual life
A former Sesame Street writer set off controversy by admitting he based the characters of Muppet live-in buddies Bert and Ernie on his own homosexual relationship. Mark Saltzman wrote scripts and songs for Sesame Street from 1985 to 1998 and told Queerty* magazine Sunday he patterned Bert on his live-in long-term lover, film editor Arnold Glassman, and Ernie on himself. “That’s what I had in my life, a Bert & Ernie relationship. How could it not permeate?” Saltzman said. “So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them, but as a loving couple.” And the signals he sent were palpable, Saltzman conceded. “I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked ‘are Bert & Ernie lovers?’ And that, coming from a preschooler was fun,” he recollected. “And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they we...